Holiday sales in the US and elswhere sparked big growth in the PC market for …

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Early estimates for fourth-quarter PC sales are in, painting a much rosier picture than the past several quarters. Even Dell, which had a significant drop in market share for 2009, managed to turn in a slight increase in unit shipments for the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, HP moves into the top spot in the US, while Apple, despite showing an increase in units shipped, moved down to number five. Dell also took a hit worldwide, being bumped from the number two spot by Acer.

In the US, PC shipments were up 25 percent for the quarter, and about 6 percent overall for the entire year. That contrasts sharply with the doom and gloom expected for the year as an effect of the recession, with huge holiday sales preventing the year from ending on a sour note.

HP has succeeded in solidifying its lead over previous sales king Dell. The company had tremendous fourth quarter growth of 45.5 percent, earning the company nearly 30 percent of the US market. HP's 15 percent growth in unit shipments for the year puts it in the number one spot for all of 2009, at 26.9 percent share.

Second-place Dell continued to slide, meanwhile, even while recording a small positive growth in shipments for the fourth quarter. It has dipped below a quarter of the US PC market for the first time in a very long time. It finished the year down 11.3 percent in shipments, to hold 24.5 percent of the market for 2009.

Acer and Toshiba both saw huge gains for the fourth quarter, recording unit shipments gains of 33.4 percent and a whopping 71.1 percent respectively. Acer, most well known for its line of inexpensive netbook and "nettop" machines, solidified itself in the number three spot in the US. Toshiba, meanwhile, pushed itself past Apple to grab the number four spot in the fourth quarter. Both companies also had healthy double-digit growth in shipments for the year as well.

"Shipment growth was largely driven by low-priced consumer mobile PCs, both in regular notebooks and [netbooks]," Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. "As economic weakness continued, buyers became extremely price sensitive. Low-priced PCs were good enough for many average consumers." The result is that some manufacturers made what Gartner describes as "damaging price cuts" to lure consumers.

The story was quite different for Apple. The preliminary results show that the company had healthy growth in the fourth quarter, with unit shipments up 27 percent. But that barely made a difference against the huge gains of Toshiba; despite edging its market share up ever so slightly to 7.4 percent, it fell to fifth place in the US. However, Apple has still commanded premium pricing throughout the economic downturn, keeping its profits intact.

"Apple does not have much presence in the professional market where the growth was still slow," Kitagawa told Ars. "Therefore, Apple did not have a negative impact from the weak professional market." Most growth was fueled from the consumer market, where Apple already has a strong presence, she said.

"Apple's profits from Mac sales are one of the best among all PC vendors," Kitagawa continued. "While enjoying good profits, there is no need for them to cut prices."

On the global scene, shipments were up 18.6 percent for the fourth quarter, again fueled by aggressive price cuts aimed squarely at cash-strapped consumers. Growth came mainly from the US and a recovering Asia. Europe, Middle East, and Africa are trailing somewhat, due in part to a later onset of recession conditions. Shipments were up just under 4 percent for the year; again, a much better result than what was predicted from earlier this year.

For the fourth quarter, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba all had impressive gains in unit shipments. Dell again managed a small 5 percent bump in units, though its market share dropped slightly. The rest of the top five worlwide PC vendors managed small gains in market share, though nothing significant enough to shake up the overall ranking.

For 2009, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba all had decent double-digit growth. The big upset came from Acer, which managed to post a 26 percent growth for the year to jump ahead of Dell as the number-two worldwide PC vendor. Dell turned in a lackluster 9.2 percent drop in shipments for 2009, moving down to number three.

"The market has weathered a storm which looks to be behind us," says Jay Chou, IDC research analyst. "But salvaging decreasing margins will soon become even more pertinent as one considers the long-term effects of holding market share at the cost of profitability. Without an effective strategy to convey a clear usage model and feature set tied to each segment, the market will inevitably continue down the slippery slope of 'good-enough' computing sold to the lowest bidder."

Note: The data used for this report comes from preliminary figures supplied by both Gartner and IDC. Figures for fourth quarter US, fourth quarter worldwide, and 2009 worldwide sales are averaged from Gartner and IDC data, though there were no major differences in those data sets. Figures for 2009 US PC sales were only provided by IDC.